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SpyGate (Chapter Forty Six)

SpyGate
This book details the evidence and the reasons behind the recently failed Coup D’Etat against the American Democracy.
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“This is the most important existential threat that our country has faced since the inception of this Republic” —Dr Churchill
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This Book was written by Dr Pano Churchill
Copyright 2018
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Chapter Forty Six
“Please Impeach my pup, my ex-girfriend, and my kitty cat”

Sessions should get his bearings straight to step-up and stop Mueller’s Russian collusion probe; according to President Donald Trump who called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to shut down special counsel Robert Mueller’s never ending investigation, this Wednesday afternoon. Of course this Tweet prompted the president’s legal team to try to manage the expectations and perhaps address the issue in legal terms…

President Donald J Trump had this to say in a series of tweets: “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this rigged Witch-Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

Trump’s personal lawyers quickly sought to downplay his comments, calling them an expression of his personal opinion — not an order to Sessions to fire Mueller, that potentially could be misinterpreted and could plunge the country into a divisive political and constitutional tug of war. Tug of war, as in Civil War. And the Justice Department indicated it would take no action based on Trump’s Twitter venting since it is obviously a form of therapeutic venting for the President to express himself directly to his people, and to inform the American Public of his views directly.

“We have been saying for months that it is time to bring this inquiry to an end,” Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said. “The president has expressed the same opinion.”

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Wednesday afternoon said Trump’s tweet was not an order, rather it was the “president’s opinion.”

“The president is not obstructing, he’s fighting back,” Sanders said. “The president has stated his opinion, he’s stating it clearly. He is certainly expressing the frustration he has with the level of corruption that we’ve seen from people like James Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe.”

“There’s a reason the president is angry and frankly, most of America is angry as well and there is no reason he shouldn’t be able to voice that opinion,” she said.

Giuliani later echoed that sentiment, saying Trump didn’t issue a presidential directive because “he used the word should, he didn’t use the word must.”

He added that Trump is “not going to direct” Sessions to squash the probe.

But Democratic lawmakers ripped the president’s comments, which they called a blatant attempt to obstruct Mueller’s ongoing investigation — which has already netted 25 indictments of Russians for interfering in the 2016 election, as well as guilty pleas from three former campaign aides to Trump. His former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has also been indicted for tax fraud and money laundering and is facing the first of two trials this month.

“The president of the United States just called on his attorney general to put an end to an investigation in which the president, his family and campaign may be implicated,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “This is an attempt to obstruct justice hiding in plain sight. America must never accept it.”

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, one of a few Republicans who have publicly criticized Trump’s aggressive rhetoric about the Mueller probe, told reporters Wednesday that “Jeff Sessions does not even have the authority to fire Robert Mueller. He has recused himself, and appropriately so.

“I don’t think there’s any chance at all that Mr. Mueller is going to be fired,” Collins added. “And it would be far better if the president just refrained from commenting, and Mr. Mueller proceeds with his investigation — which, after all, has already resulted in more than 30 indictments, including Russian nationals, and has led to a trial that is ongoing even as we speak.”

House Republicans, who have departed Washington for a five-week recess, largely stayed silent following Trump’s tirade, which also included a tweet distancing himself from Manafort.

The president has consistently disparaged Mueller’s Russia investigation, calling it a “witch hunt,” but he had not yet asked Sessions directly to call it off. He has, however, strongly criticized Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe, which is now overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

While Trump and his allies have repeatedly highlighted donations that members of Mueller’s team of prosecutors have made to Democrats, top FBI and DOJ officials have emphasized that they don’t screen personnel based on political views — and many of Mueller’s prosecutors are seasoned law enforcement veterans. Mueller himself is a Republican.

Trump also appears to have recalibrated the number of “angry Democrats” he claims are working for Mueller. While he’s consistently railed against 13, he upped the figure to 17 for his Wednesday morning tweet.

This is not the first time someone in Trump’s circle has called for the probe to end. Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign manager, in June tweeted that the president should fire Sessions and end Mueller’s investigation.

“You can’t obstruct something that was phony against you,” Parscale wrote in a tweet.

The Senate Judiciary Committee this spring approved a bipartisan bill designed to shield Mueller from any attempted firing, but it did not appear that Trump’s Wednesday outburst would lend any new momentum to legislation that GOP leaders have described as unnecessary. Collins suggested that the bill might be brought to the floor “to send a message to Mr. Mueller that he has strong support in Congress,” but one of its chief Republican authors was unruffled by Trump’s tweet and reiterated that the special counsel’s investigation should “play out.”

The Mueller protection bill’s advancement, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters, “was never because I thought there was an immediate threat to Mueller. It’s something I think we should have in place for all future special counsels.”

The president throughout the morning also continued to criticized the investigation, calling it a “total hoax” by Democrats who paid for a “phony” dossier. Trump specifically called out former FBI director James Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, in addition to Peter Strzok, an FBI agent, and Lisa Page, a former FBI lawyer, who exchanged anti-Trump texts with each other. He placed particular emphasis on Page, who reportedly had an affair with Strzok, referring to her as “[Strzok’s] lover, the lovely Lisa Page.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill who interviewed Page last month largely praised her as forthcoming and cooperative.

The dossier to which Trump referred contained salacious accusations against the president and was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Some information in it has been discredited or has yet to be confirmed.

It is unclear as to what prompted Trump’s tweets Wednesday. Fox News, however, mentioned Manafort’s trial during its 8 a.m. block. It’s the first trial connected to Mueller’s Russia probe, though Manafort is not accused of wrongdoing tied to the 2016 campaign. In addition, Fox News over the past couple of days has featured Alan Dershowitz, retired Harvard law professor and one Trump’s defenders.

Trump tweeted a quote by Dershowitz during his series of tweets.

Dershowitz, who has criticized Mueller’s investigation, on Tuesday spoke with Fox News host Tucker Carlson about the Manafort trial, saying that it was just a way for Mueller to get to Trump.

“This trial is not about Manafort,” Dershowitz said.

Judge Ellis the judge on the trial agreed, and spoke sharply to the Manafort prosecutors about their witch hunt being a wrong headed move.

“It’s an attempt to convict him of whatever they possibly can find against him, no matter how unrelated it is to the Mueller probe, in order to squeeze him to get him to sing and maybe even compose” he said, adding that Manafort will become “creative” and “make up information” in order to then make a favorable deal that will allow him to get little or no jail time.

And that sets the stage for some more interesting discussions ahead such as when former congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. (R-Calif.) spoke to hundreds of conservative students this afternoon at Young America’s Foundation’s 40th annual National Conservative Student Conference, on the power struggle of politics and the classic struggle that dates all the way back to Jefferson and Hamilton.

The struggle of where the power will lie still goes on today, this stretches all the way back to Jefferson and Hamilton and we see it again manifested in the economic struggle between Milton Friedman and Keynesian economics. Today we see this manifested in left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal and MSNBC vs. Fox News.

In 2010 the energy of the Tea Party movement energized the base, and the movement still possesses the energy which gives us a recipe for success in 2018.

Goldwater Jr. recalled serving with his father when his father served as a senator. “We didn’t get together on too many pieces of legislation, but I remember one we worked together on The Privacy Act of 1974.” Here we see the political divide and power struggle manifested even within this politically iconic family.

Goldwater recalled how Dwight D. Eisenhower manifested the principles of both liberals and conservatives. “Before you can distribute, you have to take. Government really makes nothing,” said Goldwater.

“Freedom, not government has created this great country,” said Goldwater.

His father, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ.), had “become a voice of liberty, and along with Reagan launched the conservative movement that is being carried with by the Young America’s Foundation. Ron Robinson, I take my hat off to you. I look out here and I see the future leaders of America.”

Goldwater Jr. did not shy away from taking a hardline stance of current issues which are hotly contested, illegal immigration and family separation among them and he went on to state this: .

“I think the reason we are moving so far left is because of all the illegal immigrants that are coming in from California and New York. It just points out that freedom is very attractive and people like doing business where there is less regulation.”

“America is being moved more to the left of the classic struggle between Jefferson and Hamilton. That is the challenge that we face in the next election. Are we up for the challenge? I say the answer is yes.”

He then asked: “Are you with me?”

“I think we can win this election if we want to.”

In other news, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will be called to testify again on Capitol Hill, because the issue now has become the following:
“How can Americans now trust the intelligence agencies shown to be corrupt in the very recent past?”

And of course, no doubt — Russia must be watched for its chronic efforts to sow more chaos in American elections — despite Barack Obama’s naïve assertion in 2016 that no entity could possibly ever rig a U.S. election, given the decentralization of state voting.

Lately the heads of four U.S. intelligence and security agencies — Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Chris Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone, and National Security Adviser John Bolton — held coordinated White House press conferences to remind America of the dangers of Russian chicanery. Trump, who is prone to conflate documented Russian efforts to meddle and cause chaos with unproven accusations of Trump-Russia collusion, should heed their warnings and beef up U.S. counter-espionage efforts and cyber deterrence.

But why do our intelligence heads seem to feel so exasperated that they’re not getting through to the American people? Why do they need to reassert the immediacy of the Russian threat?

The FBI joined forces with one political campaign to thwart the efforts of the opposing campaign. Has that happened before in American history?
Is it because Trump has poisoned the waters of American espionage and surveillance by his understandable furor over the never-ending Mueller investigation and his perceived downplaying of “Russian meddling”?

Not really.

Consider the larger context.

Most recently, it was disclosed, two years after the fact — and despite the FBI’s kicking-and-screaming refusal to release subpoenaed documents — that the FBI did, as alleged, offer to pay Christopher Steele to dig for dirt on the Trump campaign.

The FBI also knew that Steele was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign to find dirt on Donald Trump. We now also know that the FBI used at least one informant to spy on members of the Trump campaign. In other words, the FBI joined forces with one political campaign to thwart the efforts of the opposing campaign. Has that happened before in American history?

Pause for a minute and examine the recent history of the FBI leadership. The fired former director James Comey likely lied frequently to congressional committees when he claimed that the Steele dossier was not really a primary source for the FISA court writ against Carter Page.

Comey did write an FBI summary about the Clinton email scandal, exonerating Clinton, before he interviewed Hillary Clinton and many of the major figures in that scandal. Comey leaked at least one likely classified document, written on FBI equipment on FBI time, in a successful gambit to get a special counsel appointed, which turned out to be his friend Robert Mueller.

Comey misled a FISA judge by not fully disclosing the full origins of the Steele dossier as a product of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He also deceived a president by briefing him of selected bits of the dossier’s contents, but not informing the president that the source of most of that information was paid by the Clinton campaign.

Comey further misled the president by assuring him that he was not a subject of an FBI investigation while he repeatedly suggested to the media that Trump, in fact, was a subject.

In addition, Comey must have known that DOJ official Bruce Ohr — even after the election — served as a likely conduit to the FBI for info passed to Ohr by then-fired FBI informant Christopher Steele.

In other words, during the Trump presidency, one of his own top officials at the DOJ was secretly working with the FBI to undermine the Trump presidency.

Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy, was fired for misleading or lying to federal investigators. He oversaw the email investigation of Clinton, only months after Clinton’s associated PACs had provided most of the funds for the political campaign of McCabe’s wife.

Other FBI operatives, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, were fired from the Mueller investigation for unethical and unprofessional behavior — as well as for rampant bias shown against the target of their own investigations.

The CIA under Brennan apparently was knee-deep in efforts to push the FBI to monitor the Trump campaign, despite the fact that domestic surveillance is beyond the CIA’s legal mandate.
An entire array of FBI agents and associated DOJ officials — James Baker, Peter Kazdik, Michael Kortan, David Laufman, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, James Rybicki, Peter Strzok, and Sally Yates — have now mysteriously either resigned, retired, been reassigned, or been fired for allegedly unethical or perhaps even illegal behavior. And we still do not know the full extent of the FBI’s use of spies implanted in the Trump campaign…

Currently, congressional committees are likely to reinvestigate former CIA director John Brennan for serial false testimonies. Brennan has already lied under oath to Congress about the drone program, CIA monitoring of Senate staff computers, and his own role in seeding the Steele dossier to a senator and to DOJ and FBI officials. The CIA under Brennan apparently was knee-deep in efforts to push the FBI to monitor the Trump campaign, despite the fact that domestic surveillance is beyond the CIA’s legal mandate.

Members of the Obama NSC requested a record number of unmaskings of names associated with FISA surveillance. Many of the names of those surveilled were illegally leaked to the press. Former national-security adviser Susan Rice initially lied about her own role in such roguery and then awkwardly admitted it while insisting it was entirely proper and routine.

We also still do not know the full extent of incompetence, wrongdoing, or simple conflicts of interest of our intelligence and investigatory agencies in the Clinton email and Uranium One scandals.

The DOJ is hardly better than the intelligence agencies. Some DOJ officials signed misleading FISA warrants that they knew were not fully transparent. Attorney General Loretta Lynch improperly and secretly met with Bill Clinton while her agency was investigating Hillary Clinton. DOJ deputy Bruce Ohr may well have monitored and coordinated the spread of the Steele dossier to hurt the campaign of Donald Trump and then President Trump — and then hidden the fact that his wife had been hired to aid Steele. Rod Rosenstein did not recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation of Trump, although he was a key overseer of investigations into the Uranium One and Clinton email scandals, the FISA requests, and the collusion allegations.

In addition, “many people in the State Department were also meeting with Christopher Steele,” Devin Nunes said in a recent interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “What on earth was Christopher Steele doing meeting with State Department officials?” The congressional oversight committee that Nunes heads is now interviewing many of these officials to determine why and how they were involved with the Steele dossier.

In sum, many within the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSC, and the State Department may have been involved in the greatest scandal in American electoral history, by directing agents, informants, and employees to help one campaign to harm another — and then, even after the election, to work to undermine a sitting president. In addition, these rogue agencies spent two years fighting congressional requests to release incriminating information. And then, when they were forced against their will to cough up some documents, they redacted them so heavily that they’re almost undecipherable.

Former FBI director Comey spent months on a book tour, punctuated by daily back-and-forth feuding with the president of the United States. Former CIA director John Brennan is a current paid CNN analyst who devotes much of his commentary to calling the president treasonous and unfit. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper is a paid MSNBC consultant who has alleged that the president is a Russian intelligence asset.

So let us recontextualize the intelligence agencies’ current dilemmas.

Our current agency directors and cabinet are rightly calling universal attention to the ongoing threat of Russian espionage efforts.

They do so in concert because they are apparently worried, though they cannot say such openly, that President Trump himself and the American public are not yet sufficiently woke to these existential threats from Russia.

Such concern for the national security is fine and necessary.

But somewhere, somehow, someone must also must explain and rectify the past. For two years, the top employees of these agencies, most appointed during the Obama administration, have been engaged in unethical and illegal behavior, likely intended to throw the election to President Obama’s preferred candidate and then, after the election, to subvert the new presidency.

In other words, those who are warning of Russian collusion efforts to warp an election now work for agencies that in the recent past were doing precisely what they now rightly accuse the Russians of doing. The damage that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others have done to the reputations of the agencies they ran will live on well after their tenures are over.

The public will not be able to square such a circle — believe that the intelligence agencies are trustworthy now, while knowing they were deeply corrupt in the very recent past — unless there is some accountability for U.S.-government misdeeds.

We always expect Russian skullduggery, but we never anticipated election interference from those entrusted with protecting us.
For some reason, many still in the current FBI, CIA, DOJ, NSC, and State Deprtment are incapable of accepting that their agencies in the Obama years were weaponized to alter a U.S. election and were directed to do so by many top dogs in their Washington hierarchies.

Until we get the truth, an accounting, and some sort of justice, we will not quite become galvanized by those who rightly warn us of real Russian interference.

The reason?

We always expect Russian skullduggery, but we never anticipated election interference from those entrusted with protecting us and our institutions from our enemies.

The police were not policed — and so became like the enemies they warned us about.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ”
– Theodore Roosevelt